Character History

Jesse, together with 3 other villains, Knox, Flint and The German, escape The Company's Level 5 holding cell after Elle's electrical outburst. Sylar attempts to slice open Elle's head and take her ability, but Elle loses control of her powers and gives off a large burst of electricity, knocking Sylar unconscious but also causing the holding cells to malfunction, leading to the escape of the villains.

Jesse is in a diner when Knox enters and asks for ketchup, Jesse demands the waitress give it to him. When a group of people enter and say that Jesse isn't allowed in this part of town, he warns Knox of an impending fight. After the two dispatch the group inside the diner using their abilities, they head outside and confront another group, after defeating them, they come upon Noah and the Haitian, who capture them. The two are then seen in their Level 5 cells.

Jesse Murphy grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, with his mother and younger sister. Jesse's father maintained little contact with the family beyond short stays to avoid law enforcement or transition to his next temporary home. In conjunction with Jesse's mother's inability to stay employed consistently due to her limited English skills, Jesse was forced to spend most of his childhood fending for himself, much to his frustration.

Jesse's adolescent years were marked by a variety of misdemeanor arrests ranging from petty theft to drug dealing and street brawling. Police records indicate that Jesse typically acted alone, unlike other delinquents who adopted a criminal family to substitute for dysfunctional home lives.

By the age of sixteen Jesse left home permanently, finding work as a runner in the Las Vegas casino circuit. Over the next two years, his interactions with gambling syndicates led to a reputation as a consistent performer and interaction with a number of major Las Vegas gangs. Surveillance footage obtained from the Corinthian Casino's security feed shows the subject appearing frequently near big-win situations and being directed into contact with the winners, many of whom were reported missing soon afterward. Toward the end of Jesse's times in Las Vegas, gang informants reported that Jesse had begun to display an increasingly violent thirst for power and vengeance for real and imagined slights.

Company agents continued to track Jesse as he migrated to Los Angeles. During this period, Jesse's abilities began to manifest. The L.A.P.D. investigative division reported that the subject was highly dangerous and possessed some sort of sonic weapon. Company agents confirmed that in fact, Jesse was generating highly destructive multi-frequency sound waves from his vocal chords. His ability continued to develop over time until he proved capable of fatal injury.

Company agents finally secured Jesse immediately after a brutal massacre of both civilians and gang members near the Best Dogs Diner Los Angeles. Intelligence developed during the operation has led the Company to believe the same incident to be where Jesse met his first and only significant accomplice: Knox.

The case file also includes a psychological profile:

Aggressive stress testing has revealed the subject's deep-seated anger toward authority, stemming from his childhood frustration with his parents and their own difficulties assimilating with culture. The resulting repressed anger was severely aggravated by the subject's chronic lack of socialization during adolescent development, in turn resulting in patterns of deeply habitualized violence. While a definite link has not yet been established between the peaking of the subject's anti-social behaviors and the manifesting of his highly destructive ability, further rounds of testing are being designed.

An additional trait that should be noted is the subject's classic ritualization of vengeance and revenge motifs. This portion of the subject's personality was abruptly focused by his capture at the hands of agent Noah Bennet and the Haitian in Los Angeles. The Company has significant psychological and physical evidence including extensive voice recordings that the subject has developed a deeply pathological and malignant fixation with Agent Bennet.

Jesse had the ability of sound manipulation, which allowed him to create powerful sonic waves with his voice. Jesse's use of this ability has been shown to blow the flesh off a person's skull and create powerful concussive blasts (The Sting of Injustice). According to Noah, nobody knows exactly what Jesse could do with his ability (The Butterfly Effect), nor how loud his ability could let him scream.

According to his assignment trackerprofile, Jesse's control index was 65%. His data analysis shows his biological level at 20, cerebral at 40, elemental at 70, and temporal/spatial at 35.

Greg Beeman has stated that "At first Jesse's power was Earthquake-stomp (Like Gorgon of the Inhumans from the Fantastic Four comics). But this power implied cracking floors and walls and all manner of damage that would be expensive to produce. At the last minute we changed him to a Sonic scream (like DC's Black Canary)--this was easier to accomplish but was a bummer to us because we already had Echo from the online webisodes with sonic power."[1]

According to the casting call for Jesse, the character is supposed to be somewhere between 28 and 38 years old. He is described as "an intense guy with an explosive temper. Violent. Cruel. A mean looking S.O.B."

Francis Capra, the actor who portrays Jesse, also appeared as a recurring character on television show Veronica Mars, whose main heroine was portrayed by Kristen Bell. Kristen played Elle in Heroes.